Tag Archives: Vinyl EPs

Back in March I published a post about winners of the Tate Museum’s Turner Prize. A surprising number of these artists are involved in music projects, either as musicians themselves or as contributors of record cover art. Another post dealt with Turner Prize winner Susan Philipsz’ records. Wolfgang Tillmans won the Turner Prize in 2000. He was the first non-British winner. Besides being an internationally famous photographer and conceptual artist, Tillmans has also released three extended play 12″ vinyl records and provided their cover art.

Today I went to see the Tillmans exhibition at the Tate Modern.

The queue to see the Wolfgang Tillmans retrospective at the Tate Modern.

The exhibition was vast. Unfortunately there was no audio guide to help visitors understand what the exhibition was about. I found it extremely difficult to appreciate more than a minority of the photographs on show and didn’t spend much time going through the many rooms. My feeling was that, as most photographs in true Tillmans style, were of everyday objects and often unidentified people I didn’t get much from looking at them. I obviously need a guide to looking at Tillmans art.

BUT, following Banksy’s advice, I exited through the gift shop and there were Tillmans’ three vinyl EPs on sale. As a Tate member I even got a members’ discount.
First there was the 2016-1986 EP:

Wolfgang Tillmans’ “2016-19862 EP cover.

Second: the Device Control EP:

Tillmans’ “Device Control” EP cover.

And third: the “Thats Desire” EP:

The cover of Tillmans’ latest EP “Thats Desire” EP.

Each EP comes with a mp3 download.

I couldn’t resist putting the covers of the 2016-1986 and “Device Control” EPs side by side as the pictures seemed to be from a single image photographed in different lighting conditions and with altered coloured hangings. Are they the same images but manipulated, or what?